Japan Lives!

[Mulboyne]

AP: Japan's Fertility Rate Rises
Japan's fertility rate rose last year for the first time in six years in 2006, while the number of suicides fell below the 30,000-case mark for the first time in four, the government said Wednesday. The fertility rate - the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime - stood at 1.32 babies per woman in 2006, up from a record low of 1.26 in 2005, the Health Ministry said on its Web site. "The latest figure alone doesn't indicate whether there is a turnaround in the country's recent trend of falling number of births," said Emi Sato of the vital statistic division with the Health Ministry. She said more data on birth rates and other vital figures, including number of marriages, studied over the next few years, would be needed to spot a trend...more...

[Mulboyne]

The birth rate rose again to 1.34 but not for the right reasons:

Bloomberg: Japan's Number of New-Born Babies Fell in 2007, Reversing Gain

The number of Japanese new-born babies fell in 2007, reversing from an increase a year earlier, suggesting government measures haven't been effective in helping the world's second-largest economy replace its population. An estimated 1.089 million babies were born last year in Japan, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said in documents released today on the nation's health statistics. In 2006, the number of newborns rose 2.8 percent to 1.092 million, the first gain in six years. The government has offered more child-care facilities and financial subsidies for deliveries to encourage working mothers to have more children. The number of deaths totaled 1.10 million in 2007, outpacing births and surpassing 1 million for five straight years as people died of cancer, heart disease and stroke, the documents showed. The ministry in 2006 predicted Japan's population would fall 25 percent from 2005 to 95.2 million by 2050 because people were marrying later in life and having fewer children. That compares with a January 2002 forecast for a 21 percent decline to 100.6 million by 2050. Japan's birth rate rose to 1.34 per woman last year from 1.32 in 2006, the ministry said. That's because the number of women between the ages of 15 and 49 fell by 183,000 last year from 2006, it said. Japan is the world's most rapidly aging country, with the highest proportion of people older than 65 years and the lowest ratio of citizens younger than 15.